Economic Mobility: Skills-Focused Communities of Practice That Unlock the Value of College
WestEd’s Center for Economic Mobility is working with the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH) to help postsecondary institutions make the case for how college prepares students for in-demand jobs.
The Challenge
Using Credentials of Value frameworks, many states are evaluating college programs based on whether they lead to jobs that are in high demand and pay living wages. This works well for majors that clearly connect to specific jobs, like nursing programs that train nurses.
But it’s harder to evaluate programs in areas like social sciences. For example, people who graduate with a psychology degree are just as likely to become managers as they are counselors. Psychology students may not realize how the skills they learned in college apply to different types of available jobs.
When colleges have clear information about what skills students learn, they can then help students and employers better understand how their programs connect to careers. Colleges can also improve how they teach these skills at different points in learners’ lives by
- offering dual enrollment pathways that build strong foundations,
- recruiting college-aged youths who went straight to work by helping them take the next step in their career, and
- engaging older learners to move to new careers and adopt new tools like artificial intelligence.
How We’re Taking Action
NASH includes member institutions from more than 50 multicollege 2- and 4-year systems in 34 states. In total, these systems educate approximately three-quarters of the nation’s public, 4-year higher education students and a significant proportion of those seeking 2-year degrees.
WestEd is partnering with NASH to develop a training series and a suite of open-source data tools to help 2- and 4-year institutions understand how the programs they offer relate to their regional labor markets. Rather than zero in on emerging occupations, educators learn about living wage jobs that remain in high demand across time and how the programs they already offer provide skills required for those occupations:
- Participants learn the basic principles of labor market analysis, practice applying this information in the context of activities like conducting outreach and student advising, create local action plans, and develop communications materials that can be used to engage colleagues about implementing their ideas.
- The material includes practical tips on how they can improve critical outcomes, such as increasing completion, reducing debt, and increasing economic mobility.
- Sessions support educators in building partnerships with employers and reduce the cost of attendance in ways that maximize students’ return on investment.
By convening teams from multiple colleges within a state system, WestEd is helping to build communities of practice that can work together to adjust policies and pool resources to help link students with employers.